Russian Doll Cake

Russian Doll Cake

This Russian doll cake was created for a 21st birthday party. The original brief had been maybe a round cake with a picture of a babushka on top or some little babushka dolls around the side.

But…we decided to go one better and make the whole cake a Russian doll cake. We borrowed one of my children’s Russian dolls and used that to copy. The cake itself is scaled up from the original babushka and made out of five rounds of six inch chocolate cake, stacked, dowelled and carved into shape.

The Russian doll cake was then covered in dark chocolate ganache, smoothed over and left to harden overnight in the fridge. The fondant icing went on as one whole piece the following morning, gradually smoothed into place.

It was given a few hours to dry before painting began. The Russian doll cake was coloured using a combination of painted on airbrush colours and melted cocoa butter and edible dusting powders.

We think the end result is pretty pleasing but we are already turning our thoughts to a) offering this as a class for people to learn and b) how we could make a Russian doll cake which actually comes apart. Kind of cakes within cakes if you like!